Curtains for You

The new flat didn't look very inhabitable until we (me and my mum) managed to put curtains up. But suddenly, with just the addition of drapes in the living area, it looks much better. Everything is still up in the air (i.e. strewn across the floor) because I won't be getting any furniture in there until Friday.

Sam didn't go to work last night due to a sudden illness which both he and my mum have come down with. Sam has got it worse and stayed in bed for most of the day and night. However, when I got back from work he was awake enough to tell me the... stories he has been telling the new guy at his workplace.

According to Sam's little fibs, he's an alcoholic who works night shifts because he's ashamed to go out in the day time and needs the extra money to pay child support for his son and divorced wife. I could hardly believe what I was being told.

I already think that Sam has a roller-coaster approach to life; he's just there for the ride and there is nothing beyond his immediate actions that he has to worry about. He just lets go of the safety rail and enjoys the ride. Maybe he takes a soft drink on the ride with him to empty out onto the unsuspecting crowd below. Not because he is malicious, but because it would be funny. For him. And when he gets off the roller-coaster, the dampened crowd will have moved on, perhaps forgetting his mischief since they're only going to get even wetter when they ride the log-flume.

I should think that the new guy will get thoroughly confused if he speaks to one of his peers and says something like that guy looks too young to have a wife and child, which will likely be met with you what? Fortunately, I think a lot of Sam's co-workers are used to his exotic sense of humour.

Anyway, although it's a little cruel to toy with people in such a manner I'm sure I won't be able to stop myself from laughing when Sam updates me on his supposed adolescent alcoholism ruined my life sob story.

Sam has got Gears of War 2 and has been forcing his way through the single player campaign. After I finished cooking dinner we had a few cooperative bouts of the new "Horde" multiplayer mode which was ridiculously fun. For those that don't know, Horde pits you and your buddies against dozens, nay hundreds of Locust in wave after wave of assaults. Each wave is tougher than the last and while you might be safe in your little hidey-hole for a short while, able to hold off the opposition from your defensive position, you find that without venturing further out into the level that you will soon run out of ammunition and grenades.

It was just me and Sam playing of course, but we managed to hold off around four or five waves before dying on each of the maps we tried. A strong sense of comaradrie formed during the more intense firefights and we quickly found that sticking together, concentrating our fire, and looking out for one another was the only way to survive. Many were the moments when a Locust might leap a our barricade, intending on ambushing Sam from behind as he sniped far-off grenadiers and boomers, only to be cut in twain by my roaring Lancer's chainsaw bayonet or beaten senseless by a pistol whip. More than once I was saved from a Wrech thanks to Sam's shotgun blasts. I only managed to duck out of the way of Torque Bow projectiles in time thanks to Sam's heads up, and often while I provided the covering fire it would be Sam sniping tougher enemies or planting grenades around our position.

We also played a versus match; experiencing the brutal bleed out executions, the horror of chainsaw duels, the new anti-shotgun-dance mechanics (awesome), and the surprising usefullness of smoke grenades. Seeing another player stomp your head into a red paste is quite a horrible way to go, but Gears has always been visceral and ultra-violent. The best part, for me anyway, was when I managed to shoot out Sam's legs and he was desperately crawling away. I was playing Carmine (is there a Carmine fan club?) who, as I was advancing on Sam's helpless Locust character, suddenly said "Oh-ho, I'm not done with you!" I laughed so hard I almost couldn't finish the job.

Foreign Policy

I'm currently staying at my mum's while I get the last few bits of my move sorted out. The air bed is uncomfortable after a few hours, and the room gets cold in the mornings, but other than that it's very quiet and relaxing.

Marcos is planning to move to Spain and live with the family we have over there. He was also telling me about travelling the far east with an old friend from College who has already been once on his own. Apparently it gave him a great deal of perspective. Since it's his own choice I think Marcos might find it easy to deal with the changes; he certainly picks up languages very quickly. It's not something that I would be able to do.

Sam and I played some Gears of War. I hadn't previously realised that you can play Versus mode with just the one XBox 360, although one-on-one isn't ideal for Gears. Teams should probably be at least two-on-two so you can provide covering fire, suppressing fire, flanking manoeuvres, watch each others backs, etc. Having a team-mate to help you out of bleed-out time would also be really helpful since in one-on-one a single shot from the sniper rifle will leave you unable to move or defend yourself as your opponent strolls towards you at a leisurely pace, intending on crushing your head between his boot and the pavement.

I also played some Mirrors Edge. I can see why people said it can be likened to Portal, only (having only played a few levels of it) it seems like guns could have been removed from the game entirely (from the player, not NPCs) if the designers wanted to move into their own sort of genre. And the repetition of playing certain areas can get very frustrating. On the one hand, Runner's Vision is helpful in sticky situations, but on the other I find it distracting and almost patronising in most situations. The level design could have been more sandbox like Assassins Creed or Mercenaries with some linear stages branching off from the main areas. Or perhaps in the spirit of Beyond Good and Evil or Thief: Deadly Shadows with stages as well as a hub.

Still, I haven't played it myself long enough to make an accurate decision. Probably.

I've been following Sam's second or third play-through of The Force Unleashed, and while it's very cool, very smooth, and in some places refreshingly dark, it looks like more of an arcadey sort of game than a Star Wars game. The health and experience point "bubbles" that float into your character from every defeated enemy removed immersion for me, and although some of the split-second slow down sequences during combat are good at grabbing your attention, I think they're too frequent, to the point of there being a plethora of moments supposed to be "cool" therefore watering down the "coolness" of the entire experience. Little things like the lightsaber upgrades felt too "tacked-on" since they're never mentioned in the game and are only chosen from the pause menu. Getting the "bad end" made me think of Dark Heresy. If you've seen the unlockable costume from the "bad end" then you might know what I mean. It just has GrimDark written all over it.

Still, games like The Force Unleashed is where great gaming technology (like Euphoria for example) can really shine. Although, funnily enough, Sam hadn't actually noticed Euphoria in The Force Unleashed until I told him about it (and this was his second play through).

I've been reading through Nick's Eisenhorn collection (the Xenos, Malleus, and Hereticus novels all in one book) and on the other weekend I bought my own copy to peruse at my own leisure. I can't say I look on all of the contents as canonical (everyone has their own views and opinions as to what applies to the canon of a given setting) but I am enjoying the stories regardless. I also bought The Last Wish thanks to being influenced by The Witcher. That, also, is turning out to be a good read and the author's way of turning things on their heads has not so far been over-exaggerated.

Lastly I conquered my apprehension and played some of Condemned 2: Bloodshot. It's good. At first the changes in some of the characters made me think it was just going to be a cash-in on the first game's success (was it successful? I'm not sure I know...) and perhaps it is, I haven't gotten very far. But my opinion of the game was elevated when I came to the investigation and evidence-gathering parts of the second level. Absolutely fantastic stuff. Gone are the days of automatically switching to the appropriate forensic tool and sending evidence off to be decided on by someone else. Now you choose your tool appropriately, have to find the evidence yourself, make your own assumptions based on the evidence you are able to find, and then follow up with your own analysis. It's great! Of course, the third level began in a half-rotten corridor and a manikin standing at the end of it. A manikin. Condemned: Criminal Origins inflicted me with a terrible phobia of manikins and I immediately "took a break" upon spying the motionless model.

Shift it

I found an island of calm amidst the relentless, churning sea of chaos that I fell into last week.

Moving to my new flat has been pretty hectic. First the finance, identity, and employment checks were taking forever. One estate agent wasn't talking to the next. Then there were more complications with money and deposits. Then there was the furious last minute packing and sorting and communicating. I'm still wondering if my bed even comes apart because there's no way I can get it downstairs in one piece (it's metal too!); I've got to see about either hiring a van or asking my mum to help me out again and I know she has enough on her plate as it is between doing her own things, helping Sam out with his applications and appointments, and helping ever-indecisive Marcos move out. Then there's the electric reading to take. I found that the meter does not have an easy-to-read dial or series of digits, but instead several thousand dials and faces, each pointing at a different number.

There's the underground car park space to sort out, which I have only just this morning managed to get the ball rolling for. In the flat itself I have been provided with an electric cooker, which is great, but whoever installed it left the high-voltage cable trailing out into the kitchen proper because there are no holes in the divider board it is next to. So I had to call the estate agents and have them liaise with the landlord/lady to have a hole put through the board and the cable rerouted so I don't electrocute myself or trip over the damned thing. I also had to mention I had foreseen the same problem with the plumbing for the washer/dryer which I have to buy on Wednesday morning on the way to work after a doctor's appointment to look at these dark spots floating around in front of my eyes which is probably thanks to this crummy little office and the horrid artificial lighting in here.

And the electrician who is fixing all these not-holes and making them into holes is coming tomorrow morning but of course I am at work, so instead of going over to the flat this evening after work to hoover the place in preparation for my mum coming down on Tuesday with her car to help me with anything else I have forgotten, I have to hand over the keys to the estate agents because they don't have a spare so the electrician can get in tomorrow and hand the keys back over to the estate agents for me to pick up before finding mum and thanking her over and over for her patience and assistance.

Not forgetting having to be present for the washer/dryer and the fridge/freezer to be delivered on Saturday. I still have to contact BT and after that I'll have to select and call an ISP to get Internet access set up.

Not that it'll be of much use because my computer isn't working, remember? I think I'll take my computer over to the flat tomorrow along with anything else I can think of. I've bought two books: the Eisenhorn trilogy and The Last Wish, I can read them for entertainment I guess. There's always the collective 360 and N64 if I get really bored.

The isolated island of tranquillity was staying over at my mum's at the weekend. She's helping me move, using her car to transport things to and fro. She has been a huge help and I know she's had to be very patient with me as these things have been disquieting at best for me.

I don't know how to say thank you enough. But there you go, I'm adding something else to think about to my obstacle course.

Like-minded

Yesterday, a member of staff walked into my office and just opened up. It was unexpected, but quite welcome. We ended up talking for quite a long time about our experiences here. I think we both agreed that there is something slightly off about this place. Something wrong. "Like a dark cloud" hanging over things.

When he mentioned things that stood out, like the behaviour of some members of staff and the way they speak to everyone as if they were children, I almost jumped out of my chair to agree. When I spoke about the immaturity and irresponsibility in the actions of some of my colleagues, he seemed relieved that someone else had noticed things like that.

It was refreshing to have a conversation in which I didn't have to hold back. We were able to say things that you wouldn't normally say, and I felt like I could really speak my mind without having to worry about the repercussions.

And it means that I'm not crazy or misled. There's something here to back up these hunches and opinions I've had. I'm not crazy. These things are happening.

More than that, what impressed me was the way he was speaking about himself. Actually dissecting his own reactions and thoughts. Properly. Rather than just saying "I'm not jealous..." he was asking "Have I become jealous? Am I petty?" A lot of people don't want to find the real answers to questions like that; they'd rather just go with their knee-jerk reaction "of course I'm not jealous!" for the rest of their lives. But in this discussion with Mr. X I voiced my concerns that the bad habits of the people I work with might be rubbing off on me. That I might become that which I despise. That I've stared into the abyss for too long and that the abyss was now staring back into me.

I can count on one hand the amount of people here that I can talk to properly. That number has just increased by one. But it's still a number I can count on one hand. It seems that Mr. X had reached a breaking point and just needed to say something to someone before he blew his top. Something like that anyway.

In other news, my computer is still messing up. I took it to KC Computers during half term the other week and asked if they could replace the motherboard. I explained the problems I was having with it. They thought they had fixed it. They claimed they had fixed it. But not by changing the motherboard. They bolted it into place in another position inside the case. Not what I asked for, but if it's a cheaper job and gets the work done then fine. Only it didn't get the job done. The computer is still freezing and the graphics card is still popping out of the PCI-E slot.

This tends to happen at climactic moments during the plot of The Witcher or when travelling to an exciting new area in Fallout 3, or when I'm just about to save an hour's work on my Dark Heresy campaign. Much rage. Much, much rage.

I'm not sure what to do about it. At the moment I'm making sure that whatever I'm working on gets saved often, and then just trying to get the computer to come back to life every time it shorts out and freezes. Maybe, once the estate agents have all finished quarrelling with one another, I can do something about it after I get this move over and done with. What is taking them so long?

Full-Auto Burst

I played a couple of quickly made-up combat scenarios for Dark Heresy to get an idea of the deadliness that the system has. My conclusion? I hope you have a lot of Fate Points. This was also an exercise to aid me in remembering the rules after being used to a d20 system for so long.

The first scenario was a bounty hunter cornering his quarry in a small drinking hole on a backwater agri planet. I had both characters wearing flak jackets; the bounty hunter had a good quality stub gun (a basic solid projectile pistol), an assortment of different ammunition types, and a chainsword (the chainsword wasn't necessary but chainswords are one of the many iconic things that make the 41st millenium so awesome). His recidivistic opponent had a compact autopistol (essentially a micro-SMG or fully-automatic machine-pistol) and a knife.

I actually illustrated part of the bounty hunter/recidivist encounter but I doubt I'll be finishing it because I drew the frames too small to add any detail.

Anyway, it turns out that neither character had many favourable conditions and their fire-fight was mostly misses. Eventually the bounty hunter got hit by a lucky shot from his opponent and I just had him charge over the bar's counter at the criminal. Then we had close-quarters combat. The melee was much more violent and although he had a head wound from the gunfight, the bounty hunter made mincemeat out of the recidivist. One Righteous Fury roll later and the recidivist was just a pile of gore, guts, and splintered bone.

The lesson learned from this battle: gunfights can be all down to luck. Without favourable conditions, there will be a lot of misplaced shots and wasted ammunition. However, a single lucky shot has the potential to kill you outright (or at least severely wound you); chainswords are horrific thanks to their tearing quality (roll an extra dice for damage, discard lowest dice); and running away will not always save you.

This battle could have gone either way at the beginning because of the poor conditions the gun fight was in. Both characters had good cover and neither could advance to a better position without putting themselves out in the open. Once the combat got into melee it became a little more one-sided. I think the recidivist still had a chance, but the bounty hunter only really needed to land one solid hit with his chainsword to kill his opposing combatant.

I asked Nick to help me out with the next one. It was to be a small five-member kill team busting in on a small, illegally conducted ceremony and mowing the cultists down. The cult leader would be the only cultist armed. These weren't your regular fanatical followers of the ruinous powers, they were just misguided souls unknowingly lead to corruption by their manipulative leader.

So Nick played the kill team squad leader. We rolled up initiative as the door to the dry sewer was kicked open and the unarmed cultists start panicking and running for the exits.

At this point we discovered the terrifying power of autoguns (fully-automatic assault rifles) in the hands of trained gunmen. Because the area wasn't particularly large, and because the kill team troopers were firing their autoguns on full-auto, the cultists dropped like flies. There was hardly any point in seeing which part of the body got hit with every shot since the bullets were flying so thick and fast, with the troopers getting so many degrees of success, that everyone in the crowd of cultists was getting hit, and since none of them were armoured most of them went down in one or two impacts. Since they were fighting unarmed cultists, perhaps I should have equipped the troopers with dum-dum rounds for their autoguns.

After the wall of bullets hit the cultists and mowed most of them down, there were two survivors. One fled down an access tunnel, pursued by two members of the kill team. Nick's trooper and the two remaining troopers went for the cultist leader who fired wildly at his assailants. It seems a rifle butt is not as accurate a way to take someone down when compared to a hail of lead. Hardly surprising. Suffice to say, Nick couldn't land a blow on the cultist, despite going all out several times and sacrificing his ability to defend himself in order to land his attacks.

The cultist stabbed Nick's trooper, but couldn't get past the carapace armour and the kill team leader's natural toughness. The same result came from a point-blank shot to the arm. It seems that carapace armour really does amplify the Emperor's protection. Nick finally landed a take down hit, stunning the cult leader. The other two kill team troopers managed to grapple and subdue the dazed heretic, pinning him to the ground.

After giving the dissident a chance to redeem himself, Nick had his enforcer pull out his stub gun pistol and perform the coup-de-grace.

The lesson learned here: if you're up against well-trained autogun-wielding assailants, you had better have some kind of elaborate plan to save your hide because otherwise you're going to be acquiring a lot of improvised ventilation. In other words, if the Acolytes know they're going to be facing a kill team like this one, they had better be on the other side of the planet when the team breaks down their door. And there had better be some frag grenades set to go off in the hallway when that door is broken down.

Omnissiah

Here he is. Mr. Techpriest (click the thumbnail for the full-sized portrait). I've been doing a lot of techpriest sketches at work. I'm not entirely sure why as up until now the Adeptus Mechanicus hasn't really held my attention for very long. I never liked the idea of all those bionics fused with the human form. But it's part of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and slowly I'm beginning to see how cool and iconic the Imperium's bionics really are.

This was a new style of colouring for me. I sketched the techpriest in pencil, tidied the lines in Photoshop using my tablets, and then started to work on the colours using my tablet as well. Okay so the only colour apart from the background gradient is his bionic eyes but it's not something I've tried before. Usually I'll lasso all the parts I want colouring and either fill or gradient fill them in. Now I'm sort of thinking that I could do more with the tablet and actually "paint" the colours in.

I've uploaded three other 40k pictures to the artwork page on my GooglePages site. Mostly servo skulls because they're also iconic to the setting. That drawing of the guy with the lasgun taking cover behind a wall didn't come out perfectly, his head is disporportionately large for his body, but it's not too bad.

I think a lot of the pictures look better as thumbnails, when you can see more detail and less of the blank space behind the characters. But maybe that's just me.

Of course, I haven't been doing much drawing lately because of Fallout 3. Did I mention Fallout 3? Fallout 3. Shit. I need rehab.

No Arguements

I still haven't fallen out with Fallout. Well I've experienced a small number of bugs and glitches; namely certain robots disappearing from a settlement called Big Town and some other similar incidents. I think the bugs are largely physics based though.

The game just gets better and better. Before I think there's nothing to do but scour the wasteland for junk I find something that I hadn't seen before. The Bethesda ruins, a secret tunnel, a secluded homestead, an abandoned hospital, an improvised sky walk into a ruined hotel... the list goes on.

The problem with Fallout 3 is that I've read a grand total of three pages of The Inquisitor's Handbook (a misnomer if ever there was one, it should have been called The Acolyte's Handbook) since buying the game and progressed no further into the Eisenhorn novels. My Dark Heresy campaign has seen relatively little attention to boot so everything other than the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the future has fallen behind on my list of priorities.

I wanted to have a look at Mirror's Edge but there doesn't appear to be a PC demo for it. I am also hoping there will be a demo for Prince of Persia before it is released, but so far I have seen no sign of one.

As if I'd be able to pull myself away from Fallout 3 to play them!

And I keep looking at The Witcher's case and thinking I should really play that a little more before I forget everything about it. But the wastelands call again and I find myself striding the unforgiving deserts in search of the hollow secrets it holds within its irradiated heart.

War Never Changes

Could this post be about anything other than Fallout 3?

No. No it could not.

There is going to have to be some sort of angelic choir crying out to the heavens every time this game's name is mentioned. Thank you, Bethesda, thank you.

I was playing The Witcher, which is fantastic, but now I can't put Fallout 3 down. It's just too good. What makes it so good? Well this post wasn't going to be a short one was it? Here we go...

When I first saw Bethesda Softwork's trailer for Fallout 3 (the one with a radio playing in a wrecked bus, the ruins of DC, and the Brotherhood of Steel paladin) I was excited because it was Fallout. Not because I thought it was going to be a really good game. Sort of the opposite of the way I thought about The Witcher. When I heard of The Witcher I thought it was going to be just another RPG, then I learned it was on the Aurora Engine so I thought it was going to be just another Neverwinter Nights, then I learned the setting was supposed to be grim and dark with every stabbing everyone in the back so I thought it was going to be just another grim-dark Neverwinter Nights. I was wrong of course. The Witcher is a wonderful game and in a way I can't wait to get back to it. The only thing that's stopping me is the presence of Fallout 3.

With Fallout 3 it could have been just another RPG. It could even have been another Fallout: Tactics or Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (shudder). Sure Fallout: Tactics wasn't terrible, but it didn't feel like Fallout to me. You didn't have the feeling of post apocalyptic survival, of the struggle to get along in the wasteland, of the important quests you had to undertake, of the impact your actions had. You didn't get the character interaction or development that you did in the previous Fallout titles (i.e. Fallout and Fallout 2). Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel just wasn't Fallout to me.

However, Bethesda know what they're doing, I think. They've had experience with role playing games and they knew the scale of importance that this game would have for fans of the first two Fallout titles. Originally they said it won't just be Morrowind with guns (this was before they had ever announced Oblivion). However, I think they sort of did make Morrowind with guns in the way that they didn't make it Oblivion with guns.

Oblivion was a better game than Morrowind. It had better graphics, a smoother interface, a more friendly way of dealing with things, and the entire thing was polished to a degree that made people buy it as a benchmark game rather than as an RPG. The problem was that Morrowind was deeper and more involving. Despite having cruder graphics and a more difficult way of playing, Morrowind delivered something else. A sense of immersion and atmosphere. The NPCs communicated by written text rather than recorded voice overs, but I found that I paid more attention to what they had to say in Morrowind.

Bethesda learned from their mistakes. And then some. They must have looked really hard at Oblivion and seen what they did right and what they could have improved on. People feel more like they belong in the wasteland. Their clothing and status seems more realistic, the voice acting is much better and there's less of the boring, drawn out, half a minute long monologue you might hear from characters in other role playing games. The Fallout setting is very well established and is so rich with material for designers to use. However, that means the game requires accuracy.

But enough about the background of my expectations for the game. What's it like to actually play?

It's bloody brilliant. Like I said I've played it far too much over the weekend. The levelling and difficulty seems to be pretty accurate. I find it much more tempting to engage in combat than to run away like I did in Fallout 2, but that's because the combat is so visceral and cool. V.A.T.S. shows you the action in slow motion and allows a measure of accuracy that would be otherwise unavailable to you in the fast-paced craziness of wasteland combat.

The game seems to become less one dimensional as I play. I was wandering through the wastes, to an area I had been to before when a hysterical woman yelled at me. Her bedraggled appearance and desperation made me think of a slave turned into a human bomb by getting strapped with explosive charges. And what do you know that was exactly what had happened to her. Unfortunately she wouldn't hold still as I tried to disarm the bomb and ended up panicking and fleeing... then exploding. Then I had to deal with the slavers who had done this to her.

Damn. This entry has become far too long already. Maybe after playing it some more I should post bullet points about what I like about the game. So far I haven't encountered much to complain about at all. Except for one character saying "I could care less" which is grammatically incorrect and will earn the NPC in question a bullet sandwich when I'm prepared to deal with the consequences of killing him. That's right, grammatical Nazism still exists, even after WWIII.